Aiming for your perfect body is not just a walk in the park. Sometimes, we tend to overdo dieting and exercising that instead of losing weight, we gain even more. Because of too much information on the web, and too much diet tips and exercise routines online, we never stick to one effective workout and diet plan.

When we see how much people have tried this meal plan and have lost a lot of weight because of it, we are motivated to do it to. But when it’s our turn to try, it’s not really as effective.

The low-fat/low-carbohydrate debate comes down to this: You still have to eat fewer calories than you burn if you want to lose weight. Every study I looked at shows this. The perfect weight-loss diet is the one you can live with, whether you cut fat, carbs, or some combination.

They’re a basic unit but a tricky concept.

Use Whey to Cut Waist

Protein-rich foods put more distance between hunger pangs. And the fuller you feel between meals, the easier it is to avoid binges.

The best food for appetite destruction: whey protein. A daily shake made with two scoops of whey protein, fruit (fresh or frozen berries or a banana), and water or crushed ice will improve your middle line. You can buy whey protein at any good health-food store.

Meat Cuts Fat

When you eat, your body has to expend calories to digest the food. Protein causes this inner fire to burn the hottest, followed by carbohydrates, followed by fat. Animal proteins increase thermogenesis more than vegetable proteins, so the best calorie-burning foods are lean meats.

So eat protein at each meal—build your dinner around lean chicken, beef, or pork. That way, you’re burning the most calories through digestion at the end of the day, when your metabolism is slower.

Remember These Letters: BCAA

Amino acids are the building blocks of protein, and the branched-chain amino acids—leucine, isoleucine, and valine—are the best of the bunch. BCAAs are as close to magic foods as we’ll ever get.

They help you recover from hard workouts by reducing the protein breakdown within your muscles; they increase testosterone and growth hormone, your body’s most important fat-fighting and muscle-building hormones; and they have their most profound effect when you’re following law number 1 and cutting calories in order to lose weight.

For starters, try to get at least 10 grams (g) of BCAAs a day. Since they’re most abundant in meat and dairy products, you can get the better part of that by following laws 2 and 3. (Two scoops of whey protein and 3 ounces of beef contains 10 g of BCAAs.)

You can also buy BCAA supplements (which, you should be aware, are expensive). Look for supplements that are 50 percent leucine, 25 percent isoleucine, and 25 percent valine. Start off with 10 g per day, and wait a month before bumping up the dose. The maximum useful intake is probably 60 g a day from food and supplements.

If It’s Fryin’, You’re Dyin’

One thing that every weight-loss researcher and diet-plan author can agree on: Highly refined carbohydrates, such as fructose-sweetened beverages and low-fiber breads, are a terrible idea.

Among the many sins of Mountain Dew and Twinkies is the way they cause your blood sugar to spike soon after eating. What goes up fast comes down fast, and you end up feeling tired and hungry much sooner than you should. Goodbye diet, hello diabetes.

Now we know of a way to make refined carbohydrates even worse: Fry them. Researchers have found a suspected carcinogen called acrylamide in such products as potato chips and french fries.

A “suspected” carcinogen isn’t the same as a proven carcinogen, such as tobacco smoke. But anytime I get a chance to talk you out of eating worthless snack foods, I do it.

Food Goes Farther with Fiber

Fiber’s effect is the opposite of snack foods’. When you have fiber in your stomach, food takes longer to enter the bloodstream, and your blood-sugar level stays steady.

The benefits: You’ll have a more consistent energy supply and less between-meal hunger. The only potential downside is that you won’t get as much reading done in the bathroom.

What slows down your blood sugar at the front end speeds things up at the back end. I could give you the usual riff about eating more broccoli and raisin bran, but you can safely and easily take in more fiber by using a supplement. (MD Labs’ Fiber-Psyll is a good one; go to MDlabs.com.)

Start with 7 to 12 g a day, mixing some with water and drinking it before your main meals.

Count on Calcium

Recently, nutrition researchers discovered that dairy and other calcium-rich foods help you stay lean, prevent osteoporosis, and possibly prevent colon cancer. The recommendation is to take in 1,000 to 1,200 milligrams (mg) of calcium a day. (A cup of milk contains 300.)

Unfortunately, too much calcium may increase the risk of prostate cancer. The tragic number seems to be 600 mg a day from dairy products. And what’s the point of having a V-shaped torso if your prostate has a spare tire?

Here’s how to reap the benefits of calcium without the risks:

Avoid taking high-dose calcium supplements unless you really need them (under doctor’s orders, or if you never eat foods naturally rich in calcium). The fat-fighting properties of calcium are activated only if you obtain it from real food.

Each year, we learn more about the health benefits of omega-3 polyunsaturated fats, which are found in fish, nuts, seeds, and flaxseed and fish oils. (And also in the cool, orange-flavored supplement Coromega, available at iherb.com.)

These health benefits—less risk of heart disease and diabetes, for example—are great on their own. But omega-3 fats contribute to a better physique as well.

For example, omega-3s reduce inflammation throughout your body. That not only can prevent heart attacks (inflammation in the tissues surrounding blood vessels is a major cause) but also helps your muscles recover faster from workouts.

Bigger, less-inflamed muscles mean a faster metabolism, and speeding up your metabolism is crucial when you’re trying to get lean.

If you don’t eat fish twice a week and can’t stomach fish-oil supplements, try eggs high in omega-3s, which are found in the dairy case, next to the regular eggs. You can eat four of them a day without any negative effect on your cholesterol levels.

Make a Plan

Next time you read a weight-loss story in a newspaper or magazine, count the number of disparaging references to popular diets.

Based on the way diet gurus trash their competitors, you’d think there was no plan on earth that actually works. But the truth is that you can’t lose weight without a diet.

You must have a plan. The more sophisticated it is, and the more tailored to your likes and dislikes, the better. You can’t wing it and expect to see results.

Losing weight is one of the toughest phases in life that 70% of the population go through. I know it’s frustrating trying to have a balanced diet and still gain weight while you friend eats everything – I mean everything, and doesn’t gain anything.

From working out on a daily, to cooking meals that are meant for losing weight, to going the extra mile like taking weight loss pills, name it, we’ve done everything to lose weight and get fit.

But because there are some harmful effects of weight loss pills, how can we be so sure that the one we’re taking isn’t exactly going to risk our health? What are the other alternatives to pills?

One of the less processed and more natural take on losing weight is through drinking tea. Now we’re going to talk about the most talked about tea, which is the green tea. Next to Garcinia cambogia, this has been one of the go to detox drinks that lead to weight loss that diet junkies like me have tried.

So, what’s so special about the green tea? What makes it so effective?

Green tea, because it’s less processed, has a higher concentration of polyphenols, also called catechins, then any other types of tea, including black and oolong. The catechins in the green tea are one of the active ingredients linked to weight loss. They might prevent the accumulation of body fat, as well as increase body temperature so you burn more calories.

In addition to catechins, green tea is also a source of caffeine. Caffeine helps your body burn both calories and fat, according to the Office of Dietary Supplements, burning 9 extra calories for every 100 milligrams of caffeine you drink.

However, while lab and animal studies seem to indicate that the components in green tea decrease fat production and increase fat- and calorie-burning, its weight loss benefits for humans are less certain, according to a 2010 review article published in The Journal of Nutrition.

To get the amount of caffeine and catechins purported to help you lose weight, you’d need to drink 2 to 3 cups of green tea a day, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. Depending on brewing techniques, 1 cup of green tea has about 120 to 320 milligrams of catechins and 10 to 60 milligrams of caffeine.

A number of studies have been conducted to test the theory that green tea can help with weight loss. It’s important to note that most of these studies used green tea extract, not the actual tea. Drinking regular green tea may not help you lose any weight, according to a 2012 clinical study published in Obesity, which compared the effects of drinking regular green tea and a catechin-rich green tea on weight loss in a group of men and women with type 2 diabetes. While the group drinking catechin-rich tea lost a half-pound over the 12-week study period, the group drank a lower-catechin green tea gained half a pound.

Of the studies that show green tea might offer some weight loss benefits, the amount of weight lost isn’t significant, according to a 2012 review study published in Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (ref 5).

All calories count when you’re trying to lose weight. And while the weight-loss benefits of green tea aren’t that great, if you’re drinking it to give yourself a little extra boost, you don’t want to negate any benefits by adding extra calories from sweeteners such as honey or milk or cream. A cup of plain green tea has only 2 calories, making it a healthy addition to your weight loss diet. Adding 1 tablespoon of honey and 1 tablespoon of cream bumps up the calories in your very low-calorie tea to 86 calories. That may not sound like much, but drinking 3 cups a day adds an extra 258 calories, which may add a little more than 2 pounds a month if you drink them in addition to your regular meal plan.

Green tea is widely consumed and associated with a number of health benefits, including decreasing risk of heart disease and certain types of cancer. It’s also used to help reduce inflammation for those with inflammatory bowel disease and may aid in blood sugar control in people who suffer from diabetes. And when consumed as a beverage, green tea is considered safe.

However, as a source of caffeine, you may want to talk to your doctor before you brew your first cup if you have a history of heart problems, high blood pressure or anxiety. The tea may also interact with medications, including chemotherapy, antibiotics, blood thinners and blood pressure medication.

Too much of a good thing is bad, and losing weight cannot work without proper diet and exercise. To achieve better and faster results, pair your tea with a balanced diet and exercise.